


Birds of a Feather

by Anonymous



Category: Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 06:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: There are only two kinds of Turks in the world: good Turks and dead ones. Cissnei knows which of the two she prefers to be.





	Birds of a Feather

The first time Zack mentioned his girlfriend, Cissnei had to physically stop herself from breaking his nose. It wasn’t the sort of thing a professional Turk would do—and she didn’t, after all, break anything—but she imagined it clearly in her mind's eye: the motion, the impact, the satisfying crunch of bone and Zack’s warm blood smeared all across the back of her knuckles.

Her name, Cissnei learned one week later, was Aerith.

Of course. It _would_ be her, wouldn't it?

That evening, Cissnei went to the firing range to practice her aim on the target dummies. Bang, bang, bang. In the heart, every time.

***

The Sector Five church was, like everything else in the slums, a broken relic of a bygone era. Cissnei didn't know when it'd been built, by whom or for whom, but whatever deity it had once housed had long since fled. Now the whole building languished in glorious disrepair, a quaint collection of grimy stonework and even grimier windows, its roof barely supported by a latticework of old, rotting beams.

Perched high on one of those beams and hidden in the cool shadows that collected between roof and rafter, Cissnei lurked, watching as Aerith tended to the flowerbed far below her.

The years had changed them both. She'd been Cissnei's first surveillance detail, back when Cissnei first joined the Turks. A little bit dirty, a little bit cagey, quite a bit mousy, Aerith had reminded Cissnei of herself at that age: young, naive, and orphaned—a fledgling investment into which the company poured time and money in the hopes that, one day, it would all pay off.

Things hadn’t changed that much since those days. In the grand scheme of things, they hadn’t changed at all: Aerith was still an Ancient, Cissnei was still a Turk, and ShinRa still held the proverbial leash. But now when Cissnei saw her, she couldn’t help but think they were as different as humanly possible—and not just because Aerith was an Ancient.

The interior of the church dimmed. Clouds, or the changing angle of the sunlight. Far below her, Aerith began to hum. The melody drifted up to the rafters, feather-light and delicate.

Cissnei grimaced.

What did Aerith even _do_ with herself all day? Water flowers and wait around for Zack? Cissnei tried to imagine herself in Aerith's shoes and couldn't. She couldn't, for the life of her, imagine herself doing something as mundane as tending a garden. She couldn't imagine humming as she went about her day, or going home to a mother in the evenings to bake cookies or plant flowers or something equally sappy. She couldn't even imagine having an honest-to-god boyfriend, someone she could trust with more than her back.

For all that Aerith's blood had it out for her—for all that _ShinRa_ had it out for her—Aerith still had something resembling a normal life.

Cissnei didn't know how to feel about that.

Around them, the light strengthened, returned; the melody faded. Setting aside her watering can at the edge of the flowerbed, Aerith stood and glanced at the church's entrance. Then, furtive as a mouse, she smoothed out her dress and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

It was such a _girlish_ gesture. Cissnei felt a pang in her chest. She buried it.

It wasn't that she wanted to be Aerith. That wasn't it. Nothing in the world—not even Zack—would make her trade anything to be one of ShinRa's pet research projects. But she wanted ... what? The chance to pretend? To let go of her cynicism for just one moment and to believe that, maybe, a better life wasn't beyond her?

It was silly, completely irrational. If Reno knew, he'd never let it go. A Turk, imagining another life for herself? Cissnei hadn't gotten to where she was by hoping for something more than what she had. Therein lay the fast track out of the Turks and out of life.

She _knew_ this, had lived it most of her life. But still, here she was, skulking about in the shadows like a grotesque gargoyle come to roost while she stalked someone else's _girlfriend_. Absurd. Shrugging one-shouldered against the tightness of her suit around her shoulders, she made to leave when Aerith's head suddenly lifted, her face brightening like a flower opening to the light. Cissnei froze, her hand gripping the shuriken hanging at her side.

A minute passed. Then a familiar voice filled the church. "Heeeey! Is anyone home?"

"Zack!" Aerith said, breaking the spell, and flung herself in a flurry of skirts and petals into his arms.

Cissnei watched them embrace for few seconds before averting her eyes, heat prickling her cheeks and neck. Pressing herself further into the shadows of the rafters, she crept across the sagging beams and stole out through the roof into the stifling noon, where, overhead, the Plate and the city weighed down upon her, dark, heavy, and implacable.

 

* * *

 

How did one join the Turks?

It was different for everyone. Some came to the Turks of their own free will, but most didn't have that luxury. Rooting through the bottom-most dregs of society, Veld dredged them from the streets of Midgar's undercity or plucked them from the darkest corners of the prisons. He preferred it that way, not just because they could do what needed to be done, but because they were people who had nowhere else to go—nothing to lose and everything to gain.

For Cissnei, it'd started at an orphanage of a fishing town out on the Junon coast. Eight years old and recently returned to the orphanage after her third escape attempt of the year—she’d almost succeeded this time too, had made it all the way out to Junon—she'd woken in the middle of the night to the rusty squeak of a lantern amidst the roaring waves. Bleary-eyed and dream-muddled, she blinked up at the swinging light, momentarily blinded, before a bony hand gripped her wrist.

"There's someone here to see you," Matron said. Then, without another word, she dragged her from her bed to an open chamber at the end of the hall where a man waited. In the dim light of the room, his skin reminded her of the craggy cliff faces on the shore, cracked and scarred by the frothy waves.

"This is her?" the man said. Matron jerked her head. "Leave us," he said, and the girl Cissnei had been couldn't help but gape when the batty old witch actually left, like a child sent off to the corner.

They spoke. It was a short conversation, all business and no pleasantries. The man's name was Veld, and he was here, he said, to take her away.

It sounded too good to be true, and she caught at the hook and tested it, wary as a feral hawk eyeing an open hand and a free meal. "Why me?" she said. There had to be a catch. There was always a catch.

Veld studied her; his eyes, sunken deep into his face, made her want to shrink back into the dusty, rotting floorboards. She glared up at him instead. “Tell me how you escaped,” he said.

She didn’t want to, but his eyes brooked no disagreement, and she didn’t want him to reconsider taking her away. So she told him how she’d pilfered the bus schedule and some gil from the purse of a visiting lady, how she’d slipped out at lunch time later that week through the bathroom window and crept into the luggage compartment of a bus idling on the edge of town. The ride to Junon had taken four uncomfortable, sticky hours, but she’d made it none the worse for wear.

“Where did you want to go?”

“I dunno. Anywhere but here,” she said. Somewhere so far away that they couldn’t drag her back.

“Nebulous,” the man said and ignored her bristling. “Continue.”

And so she did. She told him how she’d stolen a hat from another urchin in the streets to hide her hair, how she’d planned to cut it later when she could find scissors or a knife. She’d managed to stay hidden for a week in the lower city, getting by first on her stolen gil, then on thievery, but her luck had run out when she’d tried to sneak into the cargo hold of a ship leaving the dock. “And now I’m back here,” she said. “Why’d you want to know?”

Veld had remained silent throughout the rest of her story. He stirred now, unfazed by her question. "You asked why I’d chosen you," he said. "It’s because you have potential. You decided you didn’t want to be here, bent your mind and body to that purpose, and nearly succeeded.”

He didn’t sound impressed, but he wasn’t angry either. “So you’re not going to punish me?”

“No,” he said. “I’m going to use you.” He stood, unsmiling. "Come."

It was an order now, not an offer. He opened the door for her and waited. She hesitated only a second, then ducked through it beneath the shadow of his arm. As the lock snicked into place behind her, his hand fell heavy on the back of her neck and led her away.

 

* * *

 

Zack went missing in October when the leaves were beginning to change colors in every place but Midgar, which couldn’t grow any trees even if it'd wanted to. It did have flowers, though, in a broken-down church of a dilapidated slum sunk miles below the upper city. They too were beginning to fade, their petals crinkling up, heads drooping towards the ground in anticipation of the frost. Winter was coming.

It was the first time they spoke. On assignment this time, Cissnei tailed Aerith to the Sector Six park and watched, incredulously, as she sold a selection of still-vibrant flowers for the better part of a chilly hour before the playground emptied of people, everyone drifting back to their makeshift shacks to shelter against the cold. Hanging back, Aerith knelt to rearrange her flowers. Then, without lifting her eyes from the basket, she said, "You're one of them, aren't you?"

Cissnei slid out of view, pressed herself deeper into the shadows of a large slide.

"I've seen you before, watching me. You Turks don't hide as well as you think you do."

Cissnei gave up the pretense. "Thanks for the warning," she said. "I'll try to meet your standards next time."

Aerith giggled, and the sound made Cissnei stiffen in annoyance. "It's the suit; it gives you away." When Cissnei didn't reply, she added, "Tseng came by."

An unpleasant twinge of surprise. Cissnei buried it. To be examined later.

Into the unbroken silence, Aerith took a deep breath and stood. "Could you ... give him something for me?"

"That depends on what it is."

"It's—it's a letter. Can I ...?"

Cissnei hesitated. It went against all her training to interact with a mark, but she'd come this far already, and anyways, it seemed that Tseng had already broken protocol. She stepped out from behind the slide, one hand reaching down to brush against her shuriken.

Aerith seemed surprised at first. Then she reached down into her basket to draw out an envelope. She held it before her like an offering.

Cissnei took it. Flipping it over, she saw the words _To: Zack Fair_ scrawled across the back in neat, precise letters. She looked up.

Aerith's hands were clasped before her as if in prayer. She bit her lip. "He's still alive," she said. "I'd know it if he died."

Cissnei almost said something then— _”He's dead, get used to it.”_ —but instead, she slipped the letter into her suit and drew back to the shadows. "I'll see that it gets to Tseng," she said.

***

Later, in Tseng's office, Cissnei noted the way his eyes flickered over the name written across the envelope, just as hers had. His expression didn't waver. He nodded once, reached across the desk, and took it, one thumb pressing hard and deep into a sharp corner of the envelope before relaxing.

Good Turks didn't ask questions. It kept things simple.

"He's alive, isn't he?" Cissnei asked.

The envelope disappeared beneath the desk into an unseen drawer, and Tseng, the icy bastard, simply looked at her. "You have your assignment."

“That’s it?” Cissnei's nails cut little crescents into her palms. "You can at least give me a straight answer, Tseng. I’m not some little girl who needs to be protected from the truth.” She hadn’t been that young in a long time, not since Veld had found her.

“I’ve never thought of you as one,” Tseng said. “But you know I can’t answer you. That information is classified, even from the Turks.”

“So Aerith’s right. He’s not dead.”

“I can’t confirm or deny that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t,” he said. Then, “Cissnei, what happened at Nibelheim is larger than you, me, and the department. Drop it, and walk away.”

It was a gift, she knew; he’d told her as much as he could, but it wasn’t enough. Walk away. Just like that. As if she could do that as easily as he could. “He was your friend too,” she said. “Don’t you owe it to him, or to Aerith?”

Tseng stiffened, almost imperceptibly. When he finally spoke, his voice was colder than the chill of winter. “And if I said yes, what would you have me do? Disobey the president and turn traitor? Level all of ShinRa and put the whole department at risk, just to find one man who might not even be alive anymore?” At Cissnei’s silence, he looked away, down at the reports on his desk. “You have your assignment,” he said again. “Dismissed.”

What could he do? What could any of them do?

Cissnei left. The office door snapped shut behind her.

 

* * *

 

Few things, Cissnei had learned, were as dangerous to a Turk as hope. On the job, it meant that you hadn't done enough; you hadn't prepared for all possible contingencies, hadn't done all you could to contain the situation. In a broken world filled with monsters of all shapes and sizes, it could be fatal. If you had to fall back on hope, you were screwed.

Off the job, it was different but no less deadly. Hope implied a better world. It suggested a possibility, hinted at something _more_ beyond what you were doing with your life, something you could maybe, one day, attain. It was a distraction, one that made you easy to manipulate. Cissnei knew it, because the Turks were taught to use hope just as ruthlessly as they used every other human emotion, good or bad, to get what they wanted. The moment you started contemplating alternatives was the moment you started to believe that maybe, you had a choice in the matter. Maybe things would be different if only you'd taken another turn, walked another path.

Maybe life would be better, if you weren't a Turk at all.

It was sheer escapism at its worst—the sort that could be just as fatal as a head injury—and it rankled at the realist in her like a splinter beneath her skin. It'd been a long time since Cissnei had thought she could ever be free. The last time she'd harbored such thoughts was when she was still a child, sitting by the hewn window of the orphanage, watching the waves dash against the jagged and broken rocks while she dreamed of wings and angels, the open skies and freedom.

Then the Turks had happened, and the world had followed—and that, as they said, was that.

Cissnei, alone in her bedroom, snapped shut her phone, chucked it aside, and leaned back against the headboard, drawing her knees up to her chest. She tried not to think of the order she had just received. She’d known it was coming ever since she’d heard the news, but seeing it made it real.

_Shoot on sight_ , her phone had said, and beneath that text, a grainy picture of Veld's face.

There were only two kinds of Turks in the world: good Turks and dead ones. Cissnei knew which of the two she preferred to be.

 

* * *

 

Early evening, late afternoon. In the church, beneath the plate, under the watchful eye of a winged wolf and surrounded by blooming flowers, Aerith asked her, wistfully, "If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?"

Cissnei didn't move from the shadows of the pillars. Some days she wished that if she stood still long enough, she'd turn into a shadow herself, or a pillar, or something equally unfeeling and inhuman. "I don't know," she said.

"You've never thought about it?"

She had, but she’d never pursued the thought. Look where it'd gotten Veld, who'd deserted ShinRa to save a long-lost daughter. Now he was on the run from the Turks with a bounty on his head. Hell, look where it'd gotten _her_.

"Do you like what you do?"

Cissnei rolled a stiff shoulder. A muscle deep in her back protested the movement. "Like or dislike has nothing to do with it."

"You _don't_ ," Aerith said, with such utter conviction that Cissnei snorted. "Why don't you leave?"

"Why don't you run?" Cissnei shot back.

"You won't let me," Aerith said cheekily. Then she deflated. "The Planet told me to leave, once. I almost did. But someone has to take care of the flowers, and my mom would worry herself to death. I couldn't—I _can't_ do that to her.” She paused. “You can, though."

"I can't," Cissnei said.

"Why not? Do you have anything keeping you here?"

The questions pressed at an old wound, though Aerith couldn't know that, in the little time that they'd shared. Even that word—"share"—implied too much closeness. It'd only been half a year since Cissnei had been assigned to watch her, and they were strangers still, even if Aerith insisted sometimes upon conversing, with or without Cissnei's participation, about any number of topics: the flowers, Midgar, the church, her mother, and rarely, Zack.

It was a strange, unwelcome glimpse into another life, another viewpoint unfiltered by a Turk's perspective. Cissnei wondered sometimes if Tseng had meant this assignment as a punishment; it certainly felt like one at times.

Aerith was still waiting for a response. Cissnei said, "My job."

"You can't leave?"

The Turks were all she had. "We're the Department of Administrative Research," Cissnei said. "I wouldn't last a day."

"Company secrets?"

"We're security risks. Our lives are forfeit if we leave." Even Veld’s, Cissnei thought. Especially Veld’s.

"They'd send the other Turks after you, wouldn't they?" Aerith said, an odd note in her voice and a strange expression on her face that, after a moment, Cissnei recognized as compassion. "But you're a Turk. You know how they work. Can't you … hide?"

Couldn't she? It was a naïve thought, hiding from the Turks. They would always catch up.

But Veld…

Cissnei looked up at the roof of the church and the fading shafts of pale sunlight peeking through the rafters, the barest hint of an open sky overhead, and the looming Plate. "Did you choose to be an Ancient?" she finally said.

"I was born like this."

"So was I," Cissnei said, and Aerith, thankfully, fell silent.

***

A week later, Aerith went missing.

The flowerbed made for an unsatisfying target—Cissnei far preferred the physicality of the firing range, the discharge of a bullet and the recoil of a gun to this kicking and shouting at flowers and thin air—but beggars couldn't be choosers, and both Aerith and her winged wolf were nowhere to be found.

Of _course_ Aerith would know how to slip through the hands of the Turks. She'd done it for years; it was a miracle she hadn't already gotten the hell out of Midgar when she'd had the chance. Either that or ...

Cissnei stopped, took a deep breath, counted to ten through the blood pounding in her ears. Could ShinRa have given the order to bring her in? They wouldn't. They _couldn't_ , not without alerting her. If the Turks had been involved, it would have had to go through Tseng. He would've told her, at least.

Would he have? The Turks were already treading on thin ice, the whole department on the edge of getting axed. Maybe, a treacherous voice whispered, he hadn't had a choice. Maybe this had been do or die. Maybe he'd known she’d make a ruckus.

(Would she have? She shook away the thought.)

Or maybe they'd gotten around him and the Turks, somehow. It wasn't entirely out of the question.

She realized she was gripping the phone in her pocket very tightly. Releasing it, she swore under her breath and left the church, keeping her eyes peeled for a flash of pastel pink on the streets. She'd check the route again, from the church to the house, and drop in on some of her informants, have them shake up the slums a little. There might be witnesses. The residents knew Aerith; it was hard not to, Aerith being who she was, the only flowergirl in the slums. They could be made to talk, with money or force. And if nobody had seen her, then ...

Then what?

Her mother. Another option, there. Cissnei tried to imagine the conversation, all the places it might lead—the threats and the promises exchanged—and grimaced past the bitter taste in her mouth. She shrugged it off. The streets first.

Three hours and no results later, Cissnei sat in the abandoned pews of the church, phone in hand as she imagined another conversation altogether, this time with Tseng. It wasn't the failure that scared her. She'd be reprimanded, and then they would find Aerith if they could; the Turks always did.

Except when it came to people like Zack; company secrets had to be protected, or covered up. They'd gone around the Turks once before, with him. But with Aerith…?

Cissnei flipped open her phone when a gust of wind stirred the hairs on the back of her neck. She glanced up, squinted at the blinding flash of sunlight on metal wings and white feathers as the wolf returned to its place in the rafters. Cissnei snapped her phone shut and stood.

"Where's Aerith?" she said.

It didn't react. When Cissnei's hand moved towards the shuriken at her side, it rustled its wings and hissed.

"What are you doing?"

The voice made Cissnei stiffen, even as something else loosened in her chest. She let her arm drop from her shuriken. "Where were you?"

Aerith swept past her towards the flowerbed with a strange spring in her step, a half-empty basket swinging from her arm. "I didn't know I needed your permission to go anywhere," she said.

It wasn't that, Cissnei wanted to snarl. Her fists were clenched again, like her teeth. She forced her fingers apart. "You were selling flowers?"

"On the Plate," Aerith said, twirling to face her. "Were you worried?"

Cissnei ignored the question. "Don't do that again."

"Hm," Aerith said, as if that answered something.

Maybe it did. Cissnei crossed her arms over her chest as Aerith bent over the flowerbed. She made another sound in the back of her throat at the kick-marks in the soil, then without looking at Cissnei, she said, "You know, I met a Turk once."

"Hard not to, for you," Cissnei said.

"It is," Aerith said, and the steadiness of her voice made Cissnei look aside. "I told you I tried to leave Midgar before, but I didn't because of my mother. That isn't … completely true.”

“Shocking.”

“I was stopped. But not by the Turks. By some other people. There was a Turk with me at the time though. She didn't even know who I was when we met, but when she found out that there were others after me, she risked her life to protect me. And even when she learned that I was an Ancient, she didn't turn me into Tseng.” Aerith’s hands smoothed over the soil, erasing the marks of Cissnei’s anger and violence. "He came to me afterwards, you know. Another one of his visits to convince me to go with him. But the Turk stood up to him and told me to run. So I did." She laughed, softly. "It didn't matter. He found me later. The Turks already know where I live."

Cissnei was silent, mind working. Who could it have been? Freyra? It sounded like it could be her.

"I hadn't known there were people like her in the Turks until I met her," Aerith said. "I'd thought they were all monsters or no better than monsters."

"Most of us aren't."

"No." Aerith said, standing and turning to look at her, "I don't believe that. You're all human. You just pretend you aren't, because it makes it easier for you to do your job. It's like how you tell yourselves you don't have a choice, that it's your job or your nature. But you _do_ have a choice. She did."

Cissnei bristled. "Not all of us—"

"She had a choice," Aerith repeated, shaking now, "And so do you. They might not always be _good_ ones, but you have them, and you're always making them, even when you don't know it. When you set your alarm at night, you're making a choice. When you get up in the morning, you're making a choice. When you put on your suit, you're making a choice."

"The suit comes with the job," Cissnei said.

"When you do your job, _that's_ a choice."

"For some of us, it's a way of life."

"That's an excuse," Aerith said. "You’re just scared.”

Cissnei almost laughed in incredulity. “I’m not—”

“Aren’t you? You’re afraid they’ll come after you, and you’re letting that fear define you. But you have control over what you do, and you ... you have the power to make people respect your choices. You shouldn't squander that opportunity." Her voice dropped. "It's more than what some of us have."

It was a naïve, simplistic worldview, frustratingly so. Cissnei wondered how she managed it, after losing her parents, losing Zack, living in the slums like this beneath ShinRa's shadow—being what she _was_. It reminded her of Zack, how he could be a SOLDIER and do what he did, see what he'd seen, and still come home thinking the universe was a moral one, that good people would be rewarded and bad people punished, if only you tried hard enough. As if sheer willpower was enough to change the world for the better.

Maybe that was what had attracted Cissnei to him so much. He was living proof that you could get your hands dirty but still wash it off at the end of the day.

Well, dead proof now. Dead or worse.

"Aerith," Cissnei said, and Aerith flinched, because it was the first time Cissnei had ever used her name. "What do you want?"

Aerith looked at her, then glanced away again. "To live," she said, and it was Cissnei this time who fell silent.

 

* * *

 

At night, lying awake in bed, Cissnei sometimes imagined saving Zack. She imagined storming his prison, guns blazing and shuriken dancing, slicing a red arc through the darkness. She imagined descending into the deepest dungeons of a castle and finding him chained, tied to a rack, with knives and scalpels and other instruments of torture lying close at hand. She imagined cutting through his bonds and helping him stumble up a long, winding staircase to freedom, of his arms wrapped around her as they sped away into a moonlit night on a roaring motorbike, his breath hot against the back of her neck.

It was a childish fantasy. She didn't even know where he was. Her mind flipped through the pages of the report, the one she'd read so many times that she'd nigh-on memorized its contents. KIA. Last seen in Nibelheim, alongside Sephiroth. An accident involving the local mako reactor. Bodies irrecoverable.

A lie, but probably one with a grain of truth. The best lies were like that.

Nibelheim. Could he still be there?

_If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?_

Unable to sleep, she got up from bed, went to the kitchen, and poured herself some water. She drank a glass, refilled it, then went to the window, following the line of streetlights and speeding cars to Sector Eight and then LOVELESS Avenue, where she'd met him for the first time. Something tickled at the edge of her memory. What had she said to him there?

_Wings symbolize freedom for those who have none._

She snorted to herself, shook her head, caught herself doing it, and almost laughed out loud. Aerith was right. Did she really have no choice, or was that just what she told herself to make her own existence more bearable?

A rhetorical question. A better one was might’ve been whether the Turks had made her this way, or if she had done it all by herself. Because it wasn't just them, she thought. It couldn't be. She was raised this way, but your life wasn't made up of decisions people made for you; it was a combination of what people made you and what you made yourself—what you _let_ people make you.

And maybe that was another reason why Veld had preferred to recruit lowlifes to the Turks. The lower down you went, the more likely you would find people who would take the hand life had dealt them and never ask for anything more. Like Cissnei, they knew how bad life could get, how far down the hole could go. Be thankful for what you have; ShinRa giveth and taketh away.

There was only one way to leave the Turks.

She downed the rest of her glass, rinsed it, and left it to dry on the counter. Humans weren't made for prisons, she thought, climbing into bed. She turned over in her lumpy mattress and closed her eyes.

The next morning, Cissnei got up, made a cup of coffee, and put on her suit. Business as usual. Old habits died hard; some never died at all.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t the first time she’d doubted her orders. It wasn't even the first time she’d bent them. It was, however, the first time she outright defied them.

"Tseng," she said into her phone. "I've lost the target."

If Tseng knew she was lying, his voice didn't show it. " _Head to the rendezvous point. I want a full report on my desk when you return to headquarters._ "

She hung up. "That's how it is," she said to Zack. "So get away safely."

She gave him the keys to her bike. It left behind a trail of dust barely visible in the moonlight, and she watched until they faded away into the darkness, leaving her alone with nothing but the moon and the waves and the wind to keep her company.

And her conscience. A strange thing. She probed at it as she made her way back to the beach and felt nothing but relief. A surprise, there; she had anticipated guilt, regret, maybe even fear for choosing failure over ... over what? Duty?

No, both of those words were wrong. Not failure, not duty. It was more like ... she'd finally chosen her life over her living, and in doing so, found herself.

It was the sort of thing she might've scoffed at before and derided as useless feel-good mumbo-jumbo, self-help garbage that was typically anything _but_ helpful. Realism, cynicism—those were her friends; telling yourself something didn't make it any more real, she knew. Even so…

She stopped when she reached the beach where she'd scuffled with Zack with nothing but the moon and the lighthouse as her witnesses. Had Tseng known when he’d sent her on this mission? He might have. Two research specimens in the area, both human, one dark-haired and tall, armed and dangerous. Specimen Z. She remembered getting the file from Tseng; his face had been unreadable.

It could’ve been coincidence. Maybe.

She didn’t believe in coincidences though, not around a man like Tseng. “I trust your discretion,” he’d said to her when he'd given her the mission. He'd known or at least suspected. It stung that he'd counted on her defiance, but that meant something, too. Confirmation that, maybe, she wasn't beyond saving, that there was potential for goodness in her still. When even Tseng, a man whose hands were as bloodstained as hers, could recognize that, it had to mean something. It had to.

Cissnei looked up. The stars were out tonight, visible even against the light of the moon. But then, it wasn't as if they were never out. They always were. You just couldn't see them back in the city. When you looked up at the skies from Midgar, all you could perceive was the pale green glow of mako reflected back at you. It was only when you left the city that you could see the stars for what they were, and breathe deep.

***

Afterwards, when all was said and done, and they’d collected what they could from the clifftop, leaving the rest for the wind and the sand and the animals prowling the wasteland. Afterwards.

The inside of the bar where Tseng had asked to meet her was smoky and crowded with drunks hiding from the rain. Cissnei shook off her coat and found him nursing a glass of water in a shadowy corner that allowed him a clear view of the entrance and exit. Not that it helped him much. He was distracted and tired and looked like hell; he seemed not to notice her until she slid into the seat across from him.

"Cissnei.” His surprise was only betrayed by a slight twitch of an eyebrow, though it could just as well have been a trick of the light. She didn’t comment on it.

"Tseng. My full report,” Cissnei said instead. She slid the folder across the table to him. The writing of it had been like drawing poison out of a wound, made more painful by anticipation than anything else. Once she’d started, it’d been too easy to lose herself in the details. _Remains of the target’s uniform were discovered on the cliff_ , she remembered typing. _Mission failed._

How could one say so much and so little at the same time?

“Thank you,” Tseng said. The report disappeared into his jacket. He regarded her for a moment, then said, "I have another mission for you."

Cissnei squared her shoulders, even though she felt ready to collapse. A week hadn’t been long enough to sleep off the last mission. "All right,” she said. “Where's the file?"

"There is none. It's off the books." He looked at her. "Undercover work."

Something about the way he said it… She stiffened, a shiver running up her spine. "Undercover?”

"You're to get out of Midgar," Tseng said. He placed a packet on the table, identical to the one she had just handed in. "You’ll be declared dead, for starters. There’s a motorbike outside; the keys are in here, along with identification and enough gil to get you overseas, if you’d like.”

Cissnei didn’t reach for the packet. "Declared dead, huh?" she said. When he didn't react, she lashed out. "What kind of game are you playing here?"

"This isn't a game."

"You know what I mean. If you want me dead, you can at least have the decency to not shoot me in the back.”

Tseng didn’t flinch at the barb. "If I'd wanted you dead,” he said, “we wouldn't be having this conversation right now."

“Then what’s this about?”

He didn’t speak for a long while. Finally, he said, "Midgar's a dangerous place to be right now.”

"Life's a dangerous place to be."

"Power is shifting,” he said. “It’s unpredictable. And the Turks have made too many mistakes. I'm getting my people out of the line of fire."

"Reno and Rude?" Cissnei said.

"Staying. I gave them the same deal," Tseng said. "But they want to stay, and I need people."

"And me?" she said. "What if I want to stay?"

Tseng gave her a measured look. "Do you?"

Did she?

Sometimes you had to face who you weren't to realize who you were. Cissnei had known for the longest time that she wasn’t Zack, that she wasn’t Aerith, but sitting there across from Tseng, she realized that she wasn’t him either and didn't _want_ to be him, a man so tied up with the Turks and his duty that he had a list of regrets as long as—maybe even longer—than the list of people he’d killed. And she couldn't do that. She couldn't _be_ that.

Tseng nodded. "Take the assignment,” he said. “And Cissnei?”

She paused, hand on the packet.

“Good luck," he said, and said her name.

She couldn’t speak for a second. Then, quietly: "You too, Tseng. Take care.”

 

* * *

 

How did one leave the Turks?

It was different for everyone. Most didn't leave, and the few who did were terminated, their deaths covered up in the dark of the night. Vincent Valentine, Veld—the list was short, painfully so.

For Cissnei, it’d started on the outskirts of Nibelheim, or perhaps before then, in Midgar all those years ago. In Sector Eight, with Zack, or maybe later, in a church with Aerith. Had it been that one conversation, or was it the weight of all her years as a Turk bearing down on her until she couldn’t breathe?

Did it matter?

Outside the gates of Midgar, she put her foot to the pedal and left the city behind in a roar of dust and sand. She wasn’t sure where she was headed or what she would find, but maybe, just maybe, that was just what she needed. Choice and hope. A life.

Freedom.


End file.
